Known in the art is a cylindrical guide roller for guiding a fabric. It is very difficult to maintain an even tension in upper and lower halves of a fabric (hereinafter, each half of a fabric is called a half-fabric) folded or flattened into half-width, such as a flattened circular knitted fabric, a flattened tubular woven fabric and a fabric folded longitudinally at the center of its width, during the running of the flattened or folded fabric which is taken up by a taking-up mechanism, for example, a pair of nip rollers rotating positively, a winding device and the like, in a process for producing the fabric or a finishing process thereof. Usually a guide roller is disposed upstream or downstream of a taking-up mechanism in a path of a running fabric. Slack of a half-fabric to be directly contacted with a guide roller (hereinafter such half-fabric is called an inside half-fabric) appears at a portion just before it contacts the guide roller, which slack extends transversely in the fabric. This is due to an uneveness of tension in the inside half-fabric and the other half-fabric not to be directly contacted with a guide roller (hereinafter such half-fabric is called an outside half-fabric), and due to the difference in length of the inside and outside half-fabrics conveyed along with the guide roller. The reason such difference occurs is that the outside half-fabric is conveyed faster than the inside half-fabric because the diameter of the guide roller acting on the outside half-fabric is substantially increased by the thickness of the inside half-fabric.
However, the slack of the inside half-fabric is allowed only to some degree, because the inside half-fabric and the outside half-fabric are connected to each other at one edge or both edges thereof. As a result, when the slack of the inside half-fabric exceeds a certain degree, the slack portion is caused to overlay itself, which results in creases, wrinkles or folds extenting in the transverse direction of the fabric, and then, the creases, wrinkles or folds pass over the guide roller. After that, the fabric having creases, wrinkles or folds may be wound on a cloth roller.
For example, in a circular loom disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,871,413 and developed by the same inventor as the present invention or other conventional circular loom, a tubular woven fabric is taken up upwards along an axis of a ring-shaped guide rail for guiding shuttles, and is conveyed in the form of being fattened into half-width through guide rollers and pinch rollers to a winding device. In the winding device the flattened tubular woven fabric is wound on a cloth roller disposed on and rotated by frictional contact with a pair of friction rollers which have axes parallel to each other. In this case, pinch rollers are adapted to pinch both edges of a tubular woven fabric flattened into half-width and to stretch the fabric in the width direction, i.e. transverse direction, in order to remove longitudinal creases or wrinkles in the tubular woven fabric. However, when a conventional cylindrical roller with a smooth surface is used as a guide roller, slack ocurs gradually in an inside half-fabric at a position just before the fabric comes into engagement with the guide roller. This is due to the difference in distance from the axis of the guide roller between the inside half-fabric and the outside half-fabric. Such slack tends to increase gradually. When such slack expands to some degree, it cause the fabric to have creases or wrinkles extending transversally, and this creased or winkled fabric is wound on a cloth roll. This is a problem which remains to be solved, not only the above-mentioned circular loom but, also, generally in a manufacturing process or a finishing process for a fabric flattened or folded into half-width.